Beinart: “Secular Democrats Are the New Normal”

Peter Beinart, Professor of journalism at the City University of New York, argues that Beto O’Rourke’s presidential-announcement video marks a paradigm shift in democratic politics, since it did not close with any mention of God.

“Today’s white liberals don’t only talk about faith less than their predecessors did. They talk about it in a strikingly different way,” writes Beinart. “Today, by contrast, progressive white candidates more often cite religion as a source of division. In his announcement video, O’Rourke boasted that during his Senate campaign in Texas, ‘people allowed no difference, however great or however small, to stand between them and divide us. Whether it was religion or gender or geography or income, we put our labels and our differences aside.’”